Cindy Abbott pushed a button, and a year's worth hard exercise, training dogs and refining mushing skills came to an abrupt end.

“It was a moment of weakness,” Cindy Abbott said Tuesday, only days after she quit Alaska's Iditarod mid-course and watched another competitor become the first person to cross the finish line at one of the world's toughest races.

After what she'd done settled in, the impact of her snap decision hit especially hard. Last year, Abbott, functionally blind in one eye, managed to take her dog team through two-thirds of the storied 1,000-mile sled race – while suffering from a cracked pelvis.

It was new technology that gave the 55-year-old mother and part-time Cal State Fullerton teacher a too-easy way out of the grueling event.

“They have this new GPS tracker that has an SOS button on it,” Abbott explained. “Once I pushed it, the rules say you're done.”

After her first attempt in 2013, Abbott said the race made climbing Mount Everest in 2010 seem easy.

Her Everest climb came three years after Abbott was diagnosed with a rare vascular disease called Wegener's granulomatosis. Now, she's losing vision in her other eye.

With that level of determination, what led her to call it quits just 175 miles into this year's race?

Some of the most treacherous terrain in the history of Iditarod.

A lack of snow this season left the race route littered with ice patches, and long stretches of dirt, gravel and rocks – not to mention taking her dogs across icy rushing rivers typically frozen over.

In the race's final leg – long after Abbott had bowed out – the wind was blowing so hard and the ice so slick that race leader and four-time Iditarod winner Jeff King was literally blown off the course just 20 miles from the finish. King was soon overtaken by 2012 winner Dallas Seavey.

Seavey finished at 4 a.m. Tuesday and posted a new race record of eight days, 13 hours, 4 minutes and 19 seconds, easily beating the previous record set in 2011.

“The ice and gravel is perfect for the dogs; it doesn't bother them at all,” Abbott said. “It's the mushers and the sleds that take the beating.”

The physical battle turned into a psychological one just two days into the race when Abbott came to the Dalzell Gorge on March 4 – a twisting and winding 32-mile stretch that descends a spine of the Alaska mountain range and ends in a creek below.

On one turn, Abbott used her body as a break to keep the sled from sliding into the freezing water. After getting the dogs to stop, she started thinking about her family behind in Irvine, and her dogs in front of her.

She said the decision to push the button was an emotional one.

“It was just mind blowing how close we came to falling in that river,” Abbott said.

She sat motionless for about 10 minutes before realizing she could get the sled to the next checkpoint without emergency help.

When she arrived at the Rohn checkpoint 4 miles down river, she found other mushers had scratched from the race too, claiming either medical issues or similar safety concerns as Abbott's.

The race support team usually evacuates around 38 sled dogs by airplane back to Anchorage for recovery. This year, 138 dogs were taken out, along with nine other mushers including Abbott.

The quick exit was a disappointment. So far, Abbott says she's spent around $160,000 on her two Iditarod attempts, and doesn't know if she can afford another one.

“But I have to remember how fortunate I am to even be able to have raced in this race. I mean, how many people can say they've climbed Mount Everest?” Abbott said.

“I went undiagnosed for 14 years, and there's no remission for my disease. At any time, it could take me down.”

She has a banner from the National Organization of Rare Disorders she pinned to her sled that reads “World Rare Disease Day 2010.” It made the trek to Everest with her.

And if she can muster up the strength and money, she says that banner will get across the finish line with her at next year's Iditarod.

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